Middle East Monitor / June 10, 2020
The Palestinian Authority (PA) will continue fighting the Palestinian resistance movements and protecting Israelis despite halting security coordination with Tel Aviv, a senior official has said.
Hussein al-Sheikh, the Palestinian official in charge of relations with Israel and one of the two closest advisers to President Mahmoud Abbas, told The New York Times: “We will prevent violence and chaos. We will not allow bloodshed. That is a strategic decision.”
He added that the PA would arrest any Palestinian who intends to carry out an attack on the occupation from the occupied West Bank, the New York Times reported.
“We are not nihilists, or fools, and we don’t want chaos. We are pragmatic. We don’t want things to reach a point of no return,” he explained.
Meanwhile, he said that the PA’s declaration of halting security coordination with Israel aimed to remind Tel Aviv of the burdens it would assume if the PA disbanded and to demonstrate that the PA could collapse if annexation goes ahead, the newspaper reported.
Last week, Al Sheikh announced that the PA would stop receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in monthly tax revenues collected by Israel on behalf of the PA.
“Of course, it is our money,” he told The New York Times. “But I was receiving it on the basis of agreements between me and them.”
“Every day, I’ll be retreating from my responsibilities,” Al-Sheikh said. “I am telling the Israelis, if this situation continues, you will have to take full responsibility as an occupying power. It could go back to like it was before Oslo.”
